A Black Flag in Raqqa

The young man stood several metres away from the front door he had just knocked on, his back turned to avoid seeing the lady of the house, should she open it.

The man, who was in his twenties, was a part of Jabhat al-Nusra, an ultraconservative armed Syrian Islamist group the United States considers a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda. Like many of its members in this city, he wore a black scarf wrapped around his head to conceal his identity; only his brown eyes were visible. He also wore a gray shalwar kameez—common in the subcontinent but not in Syria, though many young militia members have adopted it. The house was where I’d been staying in the city of Raqqa, in north-central Syria; he didn’t know the family—he was there to see me.

In early March, Raqqa city, although relatively late to join the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, became the first of Syria’s fourteen provincial capitals to fall from his grip. Islamist rebels, spearheaded by Jabhat al-Nusra, the Salafi Ahrar al-Sham brigades, and the Jabhat al-Wahda al-Tahrir al-Islamiya (a grouping of some two dozen battalions), had won the battle for the city. These groups all operate outside the broad umbrella of the more secular, often more disorganized, and sometimes undisciplined rebel Free Syrian Army.

Two men in their twenties, called Abu Noor and Abu Abdullah, answered, then called me to the door to greet the man from Jabhat. They were both civilians, but supported the uprising. We stood in the stairwell of the apartment building chatting for a few minutes, and then Abu Abdullah went inside and came back with a flyer bearing Jabhat’s name. It called for replacing the tri-starred flag used by Assad’s opponents since the uprising’s earliest days with a black one bearing the words of the Muslim shahada (“There is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger”).

“What is this?” Abu Abdullah asked the young Jabhat member. “We were just talking about it, we don’t like it.”

The Jabhat member, who was unarmed, smiled through his face covering. “And what don’t you like about it?” he said. “We are all Muslims, so what is the problem with a flag that bears the shahada?”

“We are not all Muslims,” Abu Noor said. “You and I are but there are Christians here, too. You have insulted them. And besides, what gives you the right to change the symbol of the revolution?”

“We protected the churches,” the Jabhat member said, referring to the city’s two churches, which were left unscathed in the Islamist rebel takeover of the capital. “Let’s not talk out here,” he added. “The neighbors will hear us. Do you have coffee?”

The men walked into the formal living room of the modest five-room apartment. Two older gray-haired men, Abu Moayad and Abu Mohammad, rose from sky-blue couches to greet their guest.

For the next few hours, the men engaged in a combative and highly charged discussion. It was about the black banner, but more than that about the direction the Syrian uprising has taken. The men of the house feared that it had been hijacked by Islamists, led by Jabhat al-Nusra, who saw the fall of the regime as the first step in transforming Syria’s once-cosmopolitan society into a conservative Islamic state. All four men said they wanted an Islamic state, but a moderate one.

A few days earlier, a massive black flag bearing the shahada had been hoisted atop a flagpole in Raqqa city’s main square, in front of the elegant, multi-arched governorate building. “We will become a target for American drone attacks because of the flag—it’s huge,” said Abu Noor, a wiry young man who worked in a pharmacy by day and at night volunteered to guard the post office near his home against looters. “They’ll think we’re extremist Muslims!” (There haven’t been such strikes in Syria yet, though the possibility is much discussed here.)

“There is no moderate Islam or extremist Islam,” the Jabhat member said calmly. “There is only Islam, and Islam is under attack in the West regardless of whether or not we hoist the banner. Do you think they’re waiting for that banner to hit us?” he said.

Abu Mohammad, an older man in a tan leather jacket and a white galabia (a loose, floor-length robe), interjected: “What we’re saying is, put the flag above your outposts, not in the main square of the city. We all pray, we all say, ‘There is no god but God,’ but I will not raise this flag.”

“This is an insult to people who died for the revolutionary flag,” said Abu Abdullah, a former English major at the university.

“We are not forcing anything on anyone,” the Jabhat member said. “We offered it as a choice. We did not take down the revolutionary flags in the city—even though we could have.”

Outside, the night air was cool. Warplanes that had been continuously rumbling over the city during the day had retreated, prompting bakeries, shuttered because of the threat of air strikes, to open. Long queues, segregated by gender, quickly formed as night fell, just as they did every night, guarded by armed men with black scarves covering their heads and faces.

“With this banner you have cleaved us from our country Syria,” Abu Moayad said. “Why is it here? We are not an Islamic emirate; we are part of Syria. This is a religious banner, not a country’s flag.”

The Jabhat member leaned forward and looked the older man in the eyes. “This is a lack of self-esteem, something we were conditioned to feel toward our religion by a regime that didn’t let us practice it,” he said. “Do you know how many people a day come to offer loyalty to us, to try and join us?”

At that, Abu Moayad lost his temper. He stood up, moved a few steps across the room toward the young masked man, and wagged a finger in his face: “The Syrian revolution rose up to step on Bashar’s neck, but I swear I am with Bashar against this flag!” he yelled. “That is how strongly I feel about it! You are causing fitna [internal divisions]!”

The young man remained seated. “What did you do for the revolution?” he asked.

“I used to transport ammunition smuggled from Iraq to towns in Raqqa province.”

“That’s great, thank you,” said the Jabhat member. He seemed slightly taken aback by an answer he didn’t appear to have expected. “But why do you say that this flag will cause fitna and all of the problems of the Free Army—the thieving and the looting—aren’t fitna?”

The comment only enraged Abu Moayad. “Whoever wrote this is a Zionist!” he said, grabbing the black-banner leaflet out of Abu Noor’s hands.

Things quickly escalated. “You have blasphemed because you accused somebody of being an infidel!” the Jabhat member said, raising his voice for the first time. “I know the man who made this flyer; he is not an infidel!”

“God will judge me, not you!” Abu Moayad said. “How old are you anyway? I can’t tell with that scarf covering your face.” He continued: “Where are you from? I don’t want to know your name or see your face, but where are you from?”

“I am a son of Syria,” the young man said.

A charge of blasphemy is no small matter, and this one was levelled by a member of Jabhat al-Nusra. Abu Moayad sunk back into his armchair. One of the men cracked open a window. Another went to check if the coffee was ready. Still, it was the Jabhat member who calmed things down.

“Do you want the Koran to be the constitution in a future state?” he asked the room. All the men said they did.

“We just don’t want fitna,” Abu Mohammad said quietly.

“If Jabhat causes fitna, I will leave it, but it is not,” the young man said.

“I apologize for all of this. We are angry,” a chastened Abu Moayad said.

“It’s okay, but I tell you that you haven’t convinced me of your arguments.”

“I’m telling you that you will lose all the support you have because of this flag,” Abu Mohammad said.

Coffee was served, along with pitted dates on small round plates. Abu Mohammad reached into his tan leather jacket for a pack of cigarettes. He asked the Jabhat member if he could smoke in his presence (many ultraconservatives like the Jabhat consider smoking a sin). The masked young man made a small hand gesture that meant “Go ahead.”

The talk shifted to the men they all knew from various brigades, Islamist and otherwise: where they were fighting, who had been killed, and who had switched battalions.

“Look, mistakes happen,” said the young masked man. “We weren’t all trained. I was a student before all of this.”

He still hadn’t touched the dates or even the coffee he had requested. “You’re going to starve to death if you keep wearing that thing,” Abu Mohammad said, referring to the black scarf. All the men laughed, including the Jabhat member—but he did not, at any time during the evening, take it off.

A ripped picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hangs in the city of Raqqa following days of fierce fighting. Photograph by Mohammad Al-Hussein/AFP/Getty.